It is important to provide accessibility to disabled voters
when using paper ballots. Ballot marking devices allow disabled
persons to vote independently, and can be easily used in conjunction
with precinct-count optical
scan machines.

Each voter uses the accessibility interface they need to mark the
paper ballot. For example, an audio interface can read the ballot
to a blind or visually-impaired voter wearing headphones, and accept
the voter's input for each race. It then prints the voter's choices
on the standard optical scan ballot which
was inserted at the beginning of the process.

Vision-impaired individuals can use the ballot-marking device to
verify their ballots. When a completed ballot is inserted, the machine
reads the ballot and either displays it on the screen in an enlarged
font, or provides an audio description of the votes through the headphones.

Ballot marking devices provide over-vote and under-vote protection,
thus ensuring that the optical scan ballot completed on behalf of
any voter is correctly filled in. Any optical scan ballot completed
by the ballot-marking device will be readily accepted by the precinct-count
optical scanner.

Ballot marking devicesdo
not record or count votes electronically, they only mark a paper
ballot for the voter. In essence, they are a “computerized
marking pen”. The votes are recorded on a standard optical
scan ballot, and the completed ballot is read by precinct-based optical
scanner.

Ballot marking devices do nothing more than assist voters in completing
their optical scan paper ballots. They essentially replace a human
assistant, who compromises ballot secrecy, with an automated assistant,
which does not compromise that secrecy. Unlike DRE voting machines,
the ballot marking devices do not store any electronic ballots nor
count any votes. Accordingly, they avoid most of the authentication,
security, and auditability issues associated with DRE voting machines.